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Table  of  Contents  

PROMOTING  MEDIA  LITERACY  IN  INDONESIA  ...........................................................................................  2  

USING  RSS  AND  GOOGLE  READER  FOR  TEACHING  AND  LEARNING  ....................................................  4  

USING  WIKI  AS  COLLABORATIVE  TOOL  .......................................................................................................  6  

MAKING  MUSIC  WITH  DIGITAL  TOOLS  .........................................................................................................  8  

HOW  TO  INCREASE  STUDENTS’  MOTIVATION  ........................................................................................  10    

 

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Promoting  Media  Literacy  in  Indonesia  

In Indonesia, Media Literacy is still a new concept for society. Not many Indonesian

people realize how important this literacy to be part as curriculum in schools. Indonesian

Department of National Education has not yet recognized this as a main key for nurturing smart

students. The development of information and technology is growing fast but schools have not

ready yet for that. Therefore, I have a plan that after finishing my master program and return to

Faculty of Teacher Training and Pedagogy in Indonesia, I will write a proposal to my dean and

try to promote the idea about the importance of teaching Media Literacy class for students

teachers. In order to teach the class in a meaningful way, I prefer to follow activities that I have

already learned in Media Literacy class that I took last term and combine it with Lie-Search

Presentation strategy that is developed by William Sewell (2010) in his journal article about

integrating secondary reading standard and media literacy education. First, students should learn

about five core concept and five key questions of media literacy about authorship, format,

audience, content, and purpose of media message from Center for Media Literacy (CML

MediaLit Kit). I will bring examples of media message that they usually watch and heard from

television, radio, newspaper, internet, etc. Then they will try to analyze those media messages by

using those questions. Kinds of media message that they should analyze can be ads, issues, news,

pictures, fliers, etc. The main point here, I will encourage my students to think critically by

answering questions related to the information we try to analyze. Then they will do Lie search

presentation project from Sewell (2010). In this activity students have to create a media message

that tell lie about recent issues. They will learn from this activity about techniques of

manipulating media message. The media message that they will create should looks real and

believable. They may use Adobe Photoshop, Movie Maker, or other kinds of software. Then they

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will do presentation about the hoax media message that they have already created to the class. At

the end of term, I will give individual test on analyzing media message in class.

References:

CML MediaLit Kit. (2002-2010). CML Framework. Retrieved from

http://www.medialit.org/cml-framework

Sewell, W. (2010). Integrating secondary reading standards and media literacy education.

Journal of Media Literacy Education, 141-145. Retrieved from http://www.jmle.org

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Using  RSS  and  Google  Reader  for  Teaching  and  Learning  

Google reader is a useful application for collecting any information from any websites or

blogs which provide RSS feed. I can use it to keep receiving new information quickly from those

websites or blogs without visiting them. Another benefit that I get from using Google reader is

that there are many interesting information that I found in blogs related to the usage of

technology in education. Therefore, this is an important medium for me as a teacher to follow the

information.

Google reader can also be used for teaching and learning activity. It can help me to

collect information about my students’ posts or comments in my blogs or in their own blogs

within just in seconds. In this case, students can create their own blogs and posting their

reflective journal, assignments, or problems in learning. Then, I can follow their posts, give

comments and find solutions related to my students’ problems. Thus, I can use Google reader to

collect updated information from my students’ blogs about their progress in learning. As the

result, it can help me to evaluate teaching and learning process in my class.

However, in weighing the cost benefit of using Google reader, I found two weaknesses of

it. First, Google reader cannot function well in certain smart phones. I use Sony Ericsson P1i

smart phone and I cannot read the information that I have subscribed from my phone. In fact,

using RSS feed reader in mobile phone is beneficial related to time efficiency although the

pleasure of viewing text in the phone cannot be as comfortable as in desktop computer. Second,

for small class, managing RSS feed is easy. However, in big class, subscribing and giving

comments will take more time and effort. In order to subscribe, we have to do it one by one. In

order to give comments, we cannot do it directly from Google reader. Regarding those

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weaknesses, I hope that in the future, Google reader can be more efficient and compatible with

any smart phones.

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Using  Wiki  as  Collaborative  Tool  

In my future, I will absolutely use wiki to help my students to learn how to collaborate

their ideas or projects with their friends. I believe that teaching collaboration skill will be very

important for my students’ success in their future. If we refer back to previous material about

framework of 21st century learning, it is described that one of the students’ outcome is learning

and innovation skill that includes critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

It means that collaboration is part of the skill that 21st century students have to have. I believe

that the ability to collaborate ideas with other people will be needed for students’ future careers.

Another advantage of wiki websites is that it also helps students to be more active in sharing

ideas. In Indonesia, I sometimes taught some classes consist of 40-45 students. In class there

were only a few students active in discussion and sharing idea because many of them were shy to

talk in front of many people. Wiki can facilitate these students to be more active in sharing their

ideas. It is also can help me as teacher to assess my students’ participation in class. Many times I

found out that in doing group projects, some students just relied on one or two particular students

in their own group and they got similar scores because I did not notice that until one student told

me about that. Therefore, Wiki can help me to decrease any cheating during group discussion

and give data about students’ contribution on a project given. The history page in wiki sites can

provide information about changes or updates made by students as part of their contribution on a

group project. By referring to this history page I can recognize students who are actively

contribute ideas and their efforts in solving problems on a project.

During my exploration of how teachers use educational wiki websites, I tried to evaluate

three wikis websites project below:

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1. http://6thgrade-07.pbworks.com/w/page/FrontPage

2. http://bergmannscience.wikispaces.com/

3. http://mrsibrahim.wikispaces.com/

The first wiki website provides exercises in English class for 6th grade students. There are

links to several online quizzes related to a book that students read in class. Providing link to

quizzes is a good way to enrich the materials on the website. The organization is simple and

accessible by 6th graders because there are links on the sidebars that can lead students to certain

categories of related materials. The second wiki website contains information related to science

for middle school students. The good thing about this wiki website is that there are some

interactive videos that include links to further materials and other related information. This wiki

website also applies various additional applications to enrich the materials on the page such as

Google calendar and Prezi presentation. This is attractive enough and appropriate for middle

schools students. The links are also well organized and accessible. The third wiki website

contains class materials for second graders. The appearance of the website is less attractive

compare to the two previous wiki websites. However, the teacher arranges categories and links in

order based on alphabet. I think that is part of the teacher’s strategy to help second graders

students to understand how to find the materials easily by coordinating their view on the desired

character for easy instruction. This is interesting wiki website and really appropriate for second

graders students. However, it will be more attractive if there are more pictures, video, and related

educational flash games added.

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Making  Music  with  Digital  Tools  

Music is art. It is also a good media for teaching and learning especially when we want to

teach or learn foreign language. By using Garage Band software, I can compose music or song

easily and use it as a teaching media. The song that I have already made using Garage band is

one of examples of material for teaching English as a foreign language for beginners. The title of

the song is “are you happy?” From this essay I’d like to give an example of how I use the song

as material for teaching English, my objective of creating this song, procedures in teaching,

problems I had in the past, and future planning to improve the song.

The main objective of creating this song is to help my students remember the structure or

rules of comparison and superlative sentences. I believe that song can help students to remember

rules of the sentences easily. However, before I explain more about the application of this song

in classroom, here is the musical note of the song that I created.

 

 

 

Before I taught them this song, I explained the rules of creating comparison and

superlative sentences to my students. Then, I taught them how to pronounce the sentences

together. So, they repeated after me. After they learned how to pronounce the lyrics of the song, I

gave them example how to sing the song. Then, I played the guitar and we sang the song

together. After, we sang the song several times; I gave them some questions to identify the

structure of the sentences. Finally, I gave them assignment to create their own sentences that can

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be appropriate with the song. When the first time I taught my students this song, they enjoyed the

song very much.

Based on my experience in using the song as learning material, I found a difficulty in

efficiency. I brought my own guitar in class to teach them about comparison and superlative

rules. There were some weaknesses of using real instrument in class. First, it is not efficient.

Second, I have limitation in classroom management. Third, some mistakes in playing guitar may

happen since I’m not a professional player. Therefore, by composing this song using garage

band, it may help reducing my problem in efficiency because I can just bring may own laptop

and play the song with loud speaker in classroom.

In the future, I’m going to make some changes to this song related to its beat and tempo

because the song that I have already created has a very fast tempo. Moreover, in order to make it

more enjoyable for class activity, I have to decrease the volume of my voice so that students’

voice will be dominant when they sing it together. I will also add one version of this song that

has no voice track in it so that I can use it as assignment for students to create their own

sentences and put their sentences as lyrics for the song.

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How  to  Increase  Students’  Motivation  

I read a research article written by Lee, J., McInerney, D., Liem, G., & Ortiga, Y. (2010) entitled

“The relationship between future goals and achievement goal orientations: An intrinsic-extrinsic

motivation perspective.” In this article, they define future goals as “a cognitive representation of what it is

that a student seeks to achieve in his or her future.” According to them, based on the literatures that they

used, there are five categories of future goals. They are fame-oriented (become famous person), wealth

(money and other material possessions), having good jobs or careers, society (contributing or making

impact to society), and family (providing support to the family). They also divided achievement goal

oriented into two categories. They are mastery goal orientation and performance goal orientation. Mastery

goal is related to intrinsic motivation. In this case students believe that efforts lead to success. They have

self-motivation to develop new skills, try to understand their work, improving their level of competence

or achieving a sense of mastery. Performance goal is related to extrinsic motivation. It is about one’s

ability and sense of self-worth. In this case students compare themselves with others and they wants to be

better than others by having the success with little effort.

This is a relational study. It focused on finding out these research questions: “Do different future

goals have differential relationships with achievement goal orientations? Specifically, are intrinsic future

goals related more strongly to an intrinsic achievement goal orientation than to an extrinsic achievement

goal orientation? Conversely, are extrinsic future goals more strongly associated with an extrinsic

achievement goal orientation than with an intrinsic achievement goal orientation?” The population of the

research is 5773 Singaporean secondary school students with mixed ability and cultural background.

69.6% are Chinese, 20.1% are Malay, and 3.8% Indian, and 6.5% were others. In order to collect data,

they used questionnaires.

The result shows that there is a strong positive correlation of intrinsic future goals (career-,

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society-, and family-oriented) to mastery-approach goal orientation rather than to performance-approach

goal orientation. On the other hand, extrinsic future goals (fame- and wealth-oriented) had a strong

positive correlation to performance-approach goal orientation rather than to mastery-approach goal

orientation. Thus, the research suggests that to increase students’ motivation, teachers should encourage

students to adopt mastery-approach goal and intrinsic future goals.

Based on the research, I could see that students will be self-motivated in learning if they use

intrinsic achievement goal (mastery goal) and intrinsic future goal (career, society, and family oriented)

Therefore, I learned that firstly, it is important to design the goal of learning that match students’ intrinsic

motivation. Students between 14 – 18 years old has already had dreams about careers and expectation in

the future. As a university teacher, I believe that if secondary school students understood how important is

education to achieve their future goal, students in higher education even have stronger motivation in

learning to gain better future. Secondly, the research indicates that intrinsic motivation is better than

extrinsic motivation. Thus, I learn that learning will be effective if I can relate teaching materials with

students’ future goals.

Lee, J., McInerney, D., Liem, G., & Ortiga, Y. (2010). The relationship between future goals and

achievement goal orientations: An intrinsic-extrinsic motivation perspective. Contemporary

Educational Psychology, 35(4), 264-79. doi: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2010.04.004